Our Faculty and Staff

Sanjib Bhuyan, Associate Professor

Areas of Interest: Economics of food markets and marketing systems.
This includes but is not limited to the analysis of the industrial organization of the food systems, marketing of food and agricultural products, including cooperatives and producer behavior, and analysis of consumer behavior.

Dr. Robin G. Brumfield is a Professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA, and has been the Farm Management Extension Specialist at Rutgers since 1988. She is internationally known for her work in horticultural economics. Her Greenhouse Cost Accounting Program is the standard in the greenhouse industry. She wrote the marketing and business management chapters for the best-selling textbook, Greenhouse Operations and Management by Dr. Paul V. Nelson. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Horticulture with a minor in Economics and Business from North Carolina State University. Dr. Brumfield was named a Fellow of ASHS in 2012; this is the highest honor the society bestows.
Dr. Robin Brumfield has been working with the New Jersey Annie’s Project Team as state co-leader since 2011. She worked with the team to conduct focus groups to adapt this program from the mid-west to conditions in an urban state. She has arranged the workshops so that the women complete a business plan as part of the workshop.

Dr. Brumfield took the Annie’s Project concept to Antalya, Turkey as her sabbatical project in late 2011 and co-founded Suzanne’s Project in cooperation with Akdeniz University. The Annie’s Project New Jersey and Suzanne’s Project team was awarded the 2012 Team Award for Excellence by the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, the 2013 Epsilon Sigma Phi (national extension honorary society) state team award, and the 2014 Best of the Best Rutgers Cooperative Extension Team Award. In 2013, Dr. Brumfield took Suzanne’s Project to Georgetown, Guyana. In 2013, she received the Epsilon Sigma Phi (national extension honorary society) International Service Award.

Major Areas of Expertise:
Horticultural Produce Industry and African Indigenous vegetables in Zambia & Kenya; Post-harvest technology practice and adoption in Zambia; Partnership in Food Industry Development in South Africa, Zambia, Senegal, Ghana & Rwanda; An Economic Evaluation of African Natural Products Industry; Supply Chain Analysis in the Lentil Industry in Sri Lanka; Returns to Investment on the Jersey Fresh State Sponsored Promotion Program; Farmer-to-Consumer Direct Marketing & Agritourism Developments During the Last Decade; Consumer Willingness to pay for Genetically Modified Foods; Demand for Organic, IPM and Ethnic Produce in the Northeastern U.S.

Dr. Govindasamy is serves as the Chair of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Rutgers University. He has developed an effective, nationally and internationally recognized program of research and scholarship leading to over 100 refereed publications, 150 professional presentations, plenary and invited talks and 45 external research grants. Because of his accomplishments, Dr. Govindasamy was elected in 2004 as the Chair of S1019, National Research Committee that focuses on the issues relating to fruit and vegetable marketing in the U.S. He also served as the editorial board member for the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review and The Journal of Food Distribution Research Society. Dr. Govindasamy was awarded the Presidential Emerging Leadership Award by the Food Distribution Society in October of 2004 and was elected to serve as the president-elect of the association in 2016. In the past ten years, Dr. Govindasamy’s research program has been supported by external grants and contracts of over $11 million from over 10 sources.

Areas of Interest: economics of science and technology, with special interest in understanding the impact and regulation of agricultural biotechnology, intellectual property rights, and science policy in developing countries.

Dr. Barbara O’Neill holds the rank of Distinguished Professor in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) and is Rutgers Cooperative Extension’s Specialist in Financial Resource Management.Employed by Rutgers since 1978, she has provided national leadership for the Cooperative Extension programs Investing For Your Future and Small Steps to Health and Wealth™ for over a decade. She is also a member and 2016 Chair of the eXtension Financial Security for All Community of Practice, a multi-state team of Cooperative Extension family economics professionals. Part of her work time is bought out to provide personal finance training for military family service professionals (for the eXtension Military Families Learning Network) and for New Jersey financial educators as part of a state Department of Education contract.

Areas of Interest: Science and technology policy with specific interests
in biotechnology applied to agriculture, food and biofuels; Food and agricultural policy; Economic development and poverty reduction in developing countries.

Carl Pray is a Distinguished Professor in the Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics Department, the School for Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Pray earned his PhD is in Economic History from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The focus of his research is agricultural science and technology policy in China, South Asia, Africa and Latin America. Key issues of his research are: How does government research, science policy, intellectual property rights, regulations and advances in basic sciences influence the development and adoption of new agricultural technology? What are the economic and institutional impacts of new agricultural technology – especially its impact on poor farmers in Asia and Africa?

He recently completed a project funded by Templeton Foundation on barriers to the spread of genetically engineered food crops in China, India, and East Africa. He is the Principle Investigator on a USAID funded project on the impact of food policy on countries in Africa and Asia. The results of his research have been published in 75 journal articles including Science, Nature, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Research Policy, and elsewhere and in 45 book chapters. Past research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the US Department of Agriculture, and others.

Our Staff

Our Visiting Scholars and Professors

Our PTL's and TA's

Selen Altiok

Penny Carlson

Kenneth Genco

Serpil Guran

John Italia

Laurence Jaffe

Edward Lipman

Kristin Menapace

Edwin Robinson

Paul Westbrook

Chen Yue

Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
55 Dudley Rd., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8520Cook Office Bldg. | 848-932-9155Webmaster:erobinson@sebs.rutgers.edu